Indianapolis Homeowner

While acknowledging that it’s been ages since I’ve posted on here. It’s for good reason, and as the title may have led you to believe, I did indeed purchase a home, and a sorry one at that. (I mentioned this was coming)

Lauren and I have been beyond busy as we try to juggle gut remodeling a home and working full-time jobs at architectural firms. Our level of enjoyment with the whole process has continually ebbed and flowed, but at the moment things are going pretty well so I thought I’d share a few comments, pictures, and drawings.

The house is in the Bates-Hendricks neighborhood of Indianapolis. And we are undoubtedly located on the best street in the neighborhood. Our neighbors are fantastic, we have a gorgeous esplanade, and we have an excellent view of the Bates-Hendricks house. Without those three things we never would have bought the house but everything added up and we decided to go for it.

We bought our abandoned dumpy duplex from Southeast Neighborhood Development (SEND). They had it in their property stockpile and they were looking to liquidate a few things so we were lucky(?) enough to be able to purchase it. We knew from our first walk through that it would never be worth remodeling it as a double. Each side was arranged as a shotgun, with no room being more bedroom than the last. Each side also maxed out at about 600sf.

Through literally a hundred plus floor plans we finally hit on one we’re happy with. But as much time as we’ve spent on the plan, we’ve spent 50 times that working on demolition, coordination, and construction. I think we may finally be on the verge of getting the house proper under construction. I think I’ve left out at least 20 posts worth of details in there, but who knows, maybe I’ll start having time to post more (doubtful).

We’re in the lower right of the map.

So much curb appeal…

The previous occupants left it “furnished”

It wasn’t in terrible shape

Missing the crucial elements though

Nothing special historically.

The rear is in aweful shape

The awesome Bates-Hendricks House

Built in 1895 (1515 and 1513)

Sooo many plan iterations

We decided to ditch the rear

A floor plan that put two bedrooms in the attic

Turns out it cost too much to alter this structure

We would’ve had to add a lot to these

Some added color

Floating chimneys of doom

Demo, lots and lots of demo.

An exterior wall post lath removal.

Siding salvaging

Nearing the end of demo

Vinyl siding removed

Front porch removed.

Our ugly leaky garage

Removed 3 layers of asphalt.

Had to side-over the gables

Final touches on the new roof

Just about done.

We go to the dump, a lot

Preliminary Site Plan

Demo Plan

New Floor Plan

Existing Elevations

New Elevations

Enjoy the pics. Follow me @freakitecture on Twitter or at Ben McGhee on Facebook if you want more regular blurbs and images.